Mozilla blows up cheap mobile phones

Mozilla, the makers of the Firefox web browser, had already announced Firefox OS, a mobile operating system, and Monday it unveiled phones that would run the software.

Mozilla chief technology officer Brendan Eich would not say how long folks in the US would have to wait to get their hands on the devices but consumers in Spain can buy one Tuesday: Telefónica-owned Movistar announced a €69 ($90) model for prepaying customers.

That’s cheap for a phone and that’s not an accident. At an event in downtown San Francisco, Eich made it clear that Mozilla is starting on the budget-friendly side of the smartphone market and targeting consumers looking to migrate off “feature phones” or, not as nicely, “dumbphones” — old cellphones with few applications.

“We are not aiming high and crashing Fortress Apple and Fortress Google,” Eich said. Mozilla, which has focused on open source standards rather than gargantuan income streams like the two giants, has never aspired to own the market and if they somehow did, “we’d demand a recount,” he joked.

Even still, Mozilla’s OS will take on Android, which powers many low-end smartphones. Nokia’s Asha and Microsoft’s Windows 8 also run on phones with competitive price points. Apple’s iOS only powers iPhones, which lie far to the right of the cost curve, so consumers likely won’t be weighing Firefox phones against them too often.

But nonetheless, the move is for an initial hold in the market. While Firefox phones don’t look quite as elegant or function as smoothly as iPhones or Android phones — yet — those looking to junk those old flip phones will be enticed. Mozilla has been a little short on selling points for why regular consumers, especially those migrating off feature phones who are presumably not techies in the first place, would be enticed by a phone “powered completely by Web technologies.”

Mozilla’s OS will bring its own app store called Firefox Marketplace and be based on open web standards. Also, it’s gotten to work on porting the operating system to tablets but Eich didn’t specify a release date.

Eich admitted that most people don’t care what’s “under the hood” of a phone, as long as it just works. The company’s hope is that a mobile OS built around those web standards will entice more application developers and build out the ecosystem. The quality of apps is one of the great determinants of an OS’s success.

But money talks. And if Mozilla does grab that initial handhold with cheap pricing, expect them to sharpen Firefox OS’s user experience and keep moving the price points of those phones to the right. Fortresses Apple and Google may not be on their maps now, but with success, they will be later.

For the best example of this strategy, simply look at Android. Five years ago, compared to iOS, it too was the budget, open platform to build mobile operating systems. Today its market share dominates the mobile devices, including iOS.